* * *
ADAIR DREAMED SHE was floating in a bubble of warm, sleepy pleasure. Something, the sun perhaps, was caressing her skin, stroking gently over her cheek and down her throat to trace a delicate path along the curve of her breast. She sighed even as she shifted, arching slightly into the caress. She could picture the languid fingers of sunlight stroking over her, arousing and seducing so delicately as they moved, as soft as an artist’s brush, over her rib cage to her waist and then down her thighs and back up. Slowly, achingly, the pleasure built layer upon layer upon layer as the pattern was repeated.
Warmth gradually edged into heat—little flicks of fire that raced outward along her nerve endings and seeped deeper and deeper into her center. She was melting now, and she wanted to. It was no longer the sun she imagined stroking her but a lover’s hands.
And the caresses were growing more demanding. When the fingers brushed again along the curve of her breasts they seared her skin. Her heart raced and she commanded her eyes to open. Blinded by sunlight, she couldn’t bring anything completely into focus. But as she reached to ease the burning sensation, her hand collided with, then gripped, a solid masculine one.
Reacting purely on instinct, she sat straight up, fisted her other hand and aimed an uppercut to his chin. The figure grunted, then landed on his behind just as she recognized her opponent. “Cam?”
“Hey!” He rubbed his jaw with one hand and extended the other, palm outward, to forestall another blow. “You seem to be determined to hurt me. First a stone pitcher and now an uppercut.”
“Sorry.” Maybe it was the mix of shock and admiration on his face or his rueful tone, but she had to struggle to turn a laugh into a hiccup. “Really, I’m sorry.” She covered her mouth with both hands as the laugh broke free. “So sorry.”
“I’m glad I’m such a source of amusement.”
The dry tone had her stifling another giggle. “You might stop sneaking around.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” But he smiled.
Then after a beat of silence, he said, “I’d apologize for touching you while you were asleep, but it would be a lie.”
The words made her vividly recall exactly what he’d been doing before she’d decked him, and she remembered what she’d decided before she’d drifted off. Straightening her shoulders, she clasped her hands together in her lap. “I don’t want an apology. I’ve been thinking, and I believe I have a solution for what’s going on between us.”
“I’m all ears.” He had a solution, too, and he’d been about to demonstrate it just before she’d decked him. “But make it fast. I can’t guarantee how long I can keep my hands off of you.”
“It’s simple really,” she said, her voice a little breathless. “We’re both very busy right now. What we need is a plan.”
“A plan?”
“Yes. When couples come to the castle to plan their weddings, the first thing we do is sketch out the parameters before we negotiate the details. But in our case I think we both want the same thing—a short-term, mutually satisfying physical relationship with no strings and no complications. After all, in a few days you’ll be going back to Washington and I’ll be working on the next wedding here at the castle. So while we have this time together I’m suggesting we have what my friends in Chicago always called ‘buddy sex.’ ”
“Buddy sex?” All Cam could do was stare at her. She might just as well have punched him again. What she was suggesting didn’t fit with her fantasy at all. Was it the arrangement she’d had with the boyfriend back in Chicago? The thought made him furious and brought that coppery taste back to his mouth.
“Surely you’ve heard of it.” Her tone was pleasant, earnest. “No expectations. No worries about tomorrow. Just hot and very satisfying, on-demand sex between two people who want each other but don’t have time for all the problems of a relationship. It’s perfect for us.”
For the first time he noted that her hands were clasped tight, her knuckles white. Nerves.
The fact that she was feeling them was enough to ease his temper as he met her eyes again. “You’ve had some experience with buddy sex, I take it?”
She lifted her chin. “And you haven’t?”
“You’re right. I have.” He’d not only had those kinds of relationships in the past. He’d made them his specialty. But buddy sex hadn’t been the fantasy she’d written on those yellow pages seven years ago. He was more certain of that than ever. Reaching out, he covered her clasped hands with his. “Tell me what you really want, Adair.”
“I want to get everything straight going in so that neither of us has unrealistic expectations. No hurt feelings. Do we have a deal?”
The bastard in Chicago had hurt her. That meant she deserved an honest answer. “The problem is there are no guarantees. Certainly not in my line of work. And I’d bet that in spite of the fact that you like to cross all your t’s and dot your i’s, weddings are pretty unpredictable, too.”
“Yes, but surely we can—”
“Try.” He smiled as he pulled her to her feet. “Let’s try this.” He gripped her hips, lifted her, then strode to the edge of the ledge and jumped.
They hit the water. The cold hard shock of it, the thrill of it, sang through her system as they plunged deep and then deeper. She had no choice but to hold fast and go along for the ride. She didn’t want any other choice. By the time their momentum slowed and they kicked upward, her heart was racing, her lungs burning.
When they broke through the surface of the pond they were eye-to-eye. His were so dark and glittered so fiercely that choice was snatched away again. All she could do was sink into them just as she had into the water.
“Breathe,” he said. But he barely gave her time before his mouth crushed hers and they went under again.
With one arm, he kept her pressed against him and with the other he touched her—sliding his hand from the nape of her neck down her back to her hip. But his touch was no longer gentle the way it had been when she’d been half dreaming. It was hard and possessive—the way she’d always fantasized it would be. In spite of the icy water surrounding them, heat coursed through her system. She wanted nothing more than to melt into him. Nothing.
They were going to drown. The thought flickered like a guttering candle in some part of his brain, but Cam couldn’t find the strength to heed the warning. The completeness of her surrender had him falling hard and fast into a world where there was nothing but the two of them and this terrible need she’d triggered in him.
His foot hit the bottom before he got enough of a grip on reality to kick them both back to the surface. This time when they broke the water, they were gasping and coughing. Latching onto a glimmer of sanity, he kicked to the side of the pond and pinned her against the rocks.
“Look at me,” he said.
When she did, he skimmed a hand possessively over her hip and slid two fingers into her. He watched those misty green eyes darken and glaze as she embraced him and gasped his name.
“I’ve imagined doing this to you,” he murmured as he began to move his fingers, coaxing her into a rhythm. “There’s more I’ve imagined.” So much more. He was going to show her.
She was moving faster now. He knew he could take her right here against the side of the pond. Fast and hard. The speed might ease some of the terrible pressure building inside of him. But there was so much more he wanted to give her. More he wanted to take.
Then her mouth nibbled at his neck, her teeth scraping his skin in fast, greedy bites, and he felt his control start to slip. He wanted everything. The hitch of her breath, that husky, hungry sound she made each time he stroked his fingers in and then out, in and then out. And the heat—her body seemed to be on fire, and he wanted nothing more than to be consumed by the flames. Then she clenched his fingers, her hungry mouth fastened on his, and they slipped beneath the water again.
The climax streaked into her, blasting a path from where his fingers pressed through every pore in her body. Reeling from it, she kept her mouth fused to his and demanded more. He gave her more and more as they sank into a dark primitive world and unspeakable pleasure peaked again.
“Breathe,” Cam ordered when they reached the surface.
Her lungs burned when she did.
“Got to get you out of here.”
Water was streaming down her face, but he filled her vision, the dark hair slicked to his head, the fierce eyes.
“More,” she said.
He groaned and shifted his face away when she tried to capture his mouth. “We could die.”
“The…cave,” she managed between nips at his bottom lip. “Behind…falls.”
Cam remembered then. He should have before. And thank God she had. But getting there was going to be a challenge. Holding her close, he struck out for it, using his feet to propel them toward the waterfall. But those long, silky limbs were tangled around him, trapping him. Her mouth was so close, the waterfall so far.